More bumps ahead for transport bill

As Congress starts back down the road on hammering out a transportation bill, expect more nail-biting extension deadlines, delayed projects for states and partisan spats. The reason is simple: money.

With gas tax revenues falling, there just isn’t enough money to go around for federal transportation programs. The simplest solution would be to raise the gas tax, but that’s politically poisonous. Still, the pressure from states and outside groups to finish a bill has politicians upping the rhetoric and reaching for some unorthodox and ultimately temporary solutions.

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“We’ve just been caught up partially in election-year politics and partially in this whole battle that seems to trump and override our issue, which is the budget battle,” said Pete Ruane, president and CEO of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. “That’s not going to go away; you could call that the new normal. That’s going to be part of this debate every single time until they finally make some tough decisions about how to fund these programs.”

Before Congress left for a two-week recess, the two parties brawled right up to the point of no return about whether to extend transportation programs that were otherwise set to expire last weekend. Democrats wanted House Republicans to just take up the Senate’s two-year, $109 billion transportation bill, but the House wanted more time to put together its own longer-term bill.

In the end, Congress did what was expected and extended programs for three months, but not before a bruising fight of unprecedented length and volume over something typically considered a routine matter. It’s not unusual for a transportation bill to need many extensions before lawmakers can strike a final deal, but there’s rarely been a case when an extension has generated so much angst.

Now the clock is again ticking, and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said there’s so far been no serious attempt to include Democrats in the House discussion. Rather, Republicans have been fighting among themselves in an attempt to find a way to pass the bill with only party votes. Some lawmakers want to get the federal government out of the business of transportation funding completely, shifting responsibility to the states.

Ed Wytkind, president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, said the gas tax shortfall has been years in the making.

“We’re running a 2012 transportation system on a 1993 budget. That’s the problem. It’s the point that neither party wants to talk about right now in an election year,” Wytkind said, “but at some point, there’s going to have to be a courageous bipartisan agreement reached.”

Ruane said the transportation bill has become a victim of the ongoing ideological battle over spending policy.

“This is all about raising revenues,” he said. “Because that’s the real central issue in these debates; it’s going to get political and stay political.”

Every transportation policymaker understands the potential long-term solutions to these near-term problems, but few have the guts to push them forward because they involve difficult choices about how to raise more money for federal transportation programs.

The underlying problem remains that the Highway Trust Fund, the place where gas tax revenues are deposited, does not have enough money in it to adequately fund the country’s transportation needs.

Raising the gas tax — which has remained static since the last time it was raised in 1993 — is something politicians won’t touch, especially in an election year. And the other widely discussed solution, switching to a system that would charge people based on how many miles they’ve driven, has technological and ideological challenges.

Some fiscal conservatives, backed by groups such as The Heritage Foundation, have suggested that the government should just “devolve” the program back to the states. But Ruane said that is a nonstarter.